


Ink Splotches

by sam_kom_trashkru



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Aromantic Monty makes an appearance, Clexa, F/F, F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death, Murphamy - Freeform, Soulmates, and Octaven, brief mention of child abuse, ft. Hamilton the dog, ft. my favs, soulmate au where when you draw on your skin it shows up on your soulmates skin too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 16:02:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6335296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sam_kom_trashkru/pseuds/sam_kom_trashkru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He didn't believe in soulmates, until he did. She wasn't expecting to find anyone, until she found her. She didn't understand, but then she made her.</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>Soulmate AU where when you draw something on your skin it shows up on your soulmate's skin, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ink Splotches

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of feelings and I'd been meaning to get to this AU for a while and finally got to it.

**Summary: AU where when your soulmate writes/draws on their skin, the same image appears on you. This can cause a lot of confusion.**

 

_ John Murphy _

He has long since given up on the ridiculous notion of finding his soulmate. 

He didn’t really mind not having a soulmate, there were plenty of people now who didn’t have them. It was becoming increasingly more rare to find that one special someone who was destined for you, and nothing good ever happened to John Murphy. Besides, he didn’t believe in  _ destiny _ , the whole soulmate malarkey was absolute bullshit. He’d only seen functioning soulmate marks once before, when he was really young, and his parents were both still alive. His mother had left scribbled notes about appointments and  _ Richard, please pick John up from preschool at noon _ , little things in order to keep the forgetful man on task. The man, in return, had left sweet confessions of love places most couldn’t see, in order to lighten up his wife’s day at work, or wherever she was. 

Up until he was about eight years old, John Murphy had been surrounded by a whole lot of love. His mother adored him, and his father adored her, and looked at his son with the utmost fatherly pride and joy. He was the perfect combination of the two of them, the first name his father’s suggestion, but his last, that had been his mother’s name. Richard was all-too eager to please his wife, and hadn’t minded taking her name. But then John got sick.

The doctors still didn’t really know what it was, the symptoms seeming completely harmless, like a flu, but it was more vicious. And because his mother wished nothing more than to care for him, she’d stayed by his side, regardless of the warnings that he might be contagious, and to stay away. 

Elizabeth Murphy got sick, too.

She died cradling John in her arms. 

He’d recovered quickly, but his father… his father had only gotten worse. 

Richard Murphy wasn’t sick in the physical sense, but he was sick in the mind. The loss of his soulmate destroyed him, and he soon lost his will to live, but he was fueled by his hatred towards his own son, the reason his wife had fallen ill in the first place, and he put ever last bit of his energy into making John feel as miserable as possible. He’d turned to alcohol first, and John had become an expert of dodging flying bottles and mopping up puddles of vomit, trying desperately to fix this broken man who was supposed to protect him. And so, John became Richard’s punching bag.

Skin that was usually pale and milky and smooth became coarse and bruised, a canvas of purple, green, and ugly brown splotches all in different stages of healing. The teachers just thought he was trouble, always picking fights with the other kids. Their eyes were filled with judgement, watching his every move, sneering at him like monsters from the shadows. He didn’t have a friend in the world, except for the soft voice in the back of his head, an echo of a memory of his mother. He missed her terribly. 

When he was ten, the teachers finally started catching on. Richard had long since graduated from fists to other methods of torture. His skin, once so pale and pure, was now riddled with burns, dark and ugly, some of them raised, others faded so you could only see them when you really looked. The worst ones were always in places most people didn’t see. The burns were soon accompanied by thin lines, where Richard carved his hatred into a crying, thrashing John’s skin. The more he struggled, the deeper the blade pressed, so John learned to grit his teeth and let the punishment run its course. It was easier that way.

Before the teachers started getting really concerned, Richard decided once more that his punishments weren’t enough. It wasn’t difficult for the man to convince others that he needed a whip to train an unruly horse. Now, there were raised welts on John’s back, ugly and splotched, creating a crosswork of pain and suffering and survivor’s guilt. The worst part was that John knew, deep down, that he deserved it. 

His mother was dead.

And it was all his fault.

Once the teachers, seemingly horrified, had realized the full extent of the damage to the young boy, he was shipped off to the foster system, and passed around by countless families, doctors and shrinks who tried to make him open up, but he was ten years old now, with a soul hardened like a soldier, and his eyes were narrowed and harsh and his words held a bite to them, deflecting with sarcasm and moodiness, until the people trying eventually gave up.

His father got off with nothing more than a slap to the hand. 

It wasn’t his fault, the doctors tried to tell him, he’d been driven mad by the loss of his soulmate. You couldn’t blame him for that. 

But John could, and he  _ did _ , so much so that he stopped calling himself by that name given to him by  _ that man _ (because Richard Murphy was  _ not _ , in any way, his father), shortening it to Murphy. Just Murphy. The scrappy boy who had grown into a scrappy, scarred adult, who nobody had ever wanted. Except for his mother, but she was dead now, long gone (and it was all his fault).

He held no faith in soulmates, and he was eternally grateful that he didn’t have one.

Or so he thought.

John Murphy (just Murphy now, just Murphy) was twenty-four years old, making a living working at a quiet, unassuming book shop that was frequented by quiet, unassuming people who knew nothing about his traumatic past, trying to find solace in his isolation. Until one morning, he awoke to find a rather large, unnervingly  _ realistic  _ penis sketched in dark purple ink covering his entire left forearm. Thinking for a while that this was some cruel joke the world had decided to play on him, he tried scrubbing it away for at least thirty minutes, until his skin was red and irritated, but the ink refused to budge. He wasn’t going to be able to get rid of this the normal way, so finally, he relented. 

In his loopy, elegant handwriting, in black pen, he neatly wrote under the penis  _ could you please wash this off? I have work tomorrow and I doubt that the customers would appreciate seeing this, and it’s too hot for long sleeves.  _ He waited for a long couple of minutes, convinced he was going insane, before the person on the other end of this unfortunate bond wrote back, writing rushed, as though they were unbelievably excited. 

_ I’m so sorry, I lost a bet and my friend Clarke decided this was the punishment. My name’s Bellamy, Bellamy Blake. Can we meet, sometime? Y’know, because we’re soulmates and all? _ After the chicken-scratch writing finished etching itself into John’s skin, the veined, bulbous, purple penis began fading, much to his relief. He feels almost bad for his response.

_ No, sorry, I don’t do the whole soulmate thing _ .

If he’d thought that his apparent soulmate, Bellamy Blake, was going to give up just like that, he was sorely mistaken. The other man would leave him little messages every day, sometimes about what he was doing, other times about himself. Murphy learned that he was a Pisces, had a dog named Hamilton, and was a history professor at Ark University. 

Bellamy would leave little notes on where he was going, perhaps in hopes that Murphy would follow him and find him, sometime. It was through these, and the confession that Bellamy taught at Ark University, that Murphy figured out that they both lived in Washington DC. So, when Murphy looked down at his wrist during the morning shift, he felt his blood freeze when he saw  _ City of Light Books _ scratched in familiar hurried writing.

When he saw the other man enter, all floppy hair and bright, kind eyes, he decided that maybe, just maybe, he should give this soulmate thing a try.

* * *

 

_ Lexa Woods _

She was luckier than most, which was saying something, because Lexa never considered herself to be a very lucky person. Her family was from an upper-middle class income, so she wasn’t  _ unlucky _ , exactly, but she never felt as though anything monumentally  _ great  _ would ever happen to her. 

They moved to DC when she was eight years old, wide-eyed and scared because the harsh deserts of Arizona were her home, and all the bright shades of green and cool air and so much  _ rain  _ was foreign to her. It helped that she was accompanied by her family, who were her best friends in the entire world. They were a very mixed bunch, all adopted, but they found a home within each other. Indra was a loving mother, stern and strict, but she adored her children and kept them all in line. Gustus was a jovial man, filled with love, and he gave the very best hugs. Some of Lexa’s old friends had been scared of him, with his big muscles and tattooed skin (he  _ was  _ a tattoo artist, he was bound to have tattoos), but Lexa privately thought they should’ve been more afraid of her mother. Indra was the quiet, calculating kind of deadly that nobody should ever want to cross, which was why she made a great lawyer.

Lexa had three wonderful siblings. Sure, they got on each other’s nerves but, at the end of the day, they were each other’s best friends and closest confidants. Anya was the oldest, her silent, stern demeanor matching that of their adoptive mother. But in the company of her siblings, her mouth would tug upwards ever so slightly, and her humor was sharp and quick, dry and whipping. She was an overachiever in every sense of the word, and absolutely  _ loved  _ competing with Lexa (Friday night game nights were a  _ massacre _ , with Anya screeching things like “Blood must have blood!” and generally terrifying the rest of her family). 

Lincoln was the same age as Lexa, and the two of them behaved like twins would. In every way that Anya was sharp and cold, Lincoln was soft and warm. He was a peacemaker, and  _ hated  _ fighting with every fibre of his being (but Gustus had signed him up for self-defense classes as soon as Lincoln would agree, the previously abused boy seeing the need to be able to prevent his early childhood days from ever reoccurring), preferring instead to compromise. Every time Lexa and Anya got into a heated argument, he was their middleman, trying to make them apologize to one another (which often took much too long, as both Lexa and Anya were incredibly stubborn, Lincoln had the patience of a saint). His room was filled with elaborate charcoal sketches, the boy adoring to capture the world around him on paper, his smiles filled with life and his chuckles warm and earthy.

Aden was the youngest, a little grinning toddler who had all of his older siblings wrapped around his little fingers. He came to them scared and shivering, but relaxed in the safe embrace of Indra’s arms, and each of his elder siblings swore to protect him. He wouldn’t remember the dry air of Arizona, nor the memories of Lincoln accidentally sitting on a cactus, or Anya being chased by a javelina, but he would remember the warmth from the place where he first found love. 

But back to moving. 

DC was very different from Arizona. So very different. It was filled with people that looked a lot like Indra, wearing suits and trying to be as professional as possible. They moved to a cozy neighborhood with children of varying ages, and quickly found a new home there. 

Lexa hated Nia, the cold woman who lived at the end of the street, and had been warned of her upon her first day of arrival by her next-door neighbor, a happy, energetic girl named Costia, with skin the color of the earth and hair as wild as the wind, and the two of them became fast friends. She found, though, that Nia’s children were alright. Roan and Anya got on well enough, and Ontari was only a bit older than Aden.

She met the other children from her street during school. She recognized Bellamy from two-doors down when he escorted a scowling Octavia to class, the eight year old girl muttering that she didn’t need her older brother taking her everywhere, but the twelve year old boy still did it anyways, shooting a smile in Lexa’s direction before heading off to the classroom where she knew Anya and Roan were. Octavia smiled at her and Lincoln brightly, talking rapidly to introduce herself, saying that she’d show them everyone because Costia was a year older than them and thus, in a different class. 

Jasper and Monty were funny. The first wore a pair of big goggles on his head, proudly exclaiming that he was going to be a chemist one day, and hoped to be even  _ greater  _ than Mendeleev, Monty nodding enthusiastically when his friend explained the different wonders of chemistry. The smaller boy, who appeared to be of Korean descent, was a bit of a genius. He took advanced courses online but chose to remain in the same class as the kids his age, just to stay with his best friend, and Lexa admired that. Lincoln warmed up to the two of them quickly, and the twins found themselves comfortable in the presence of these new children.

Before the bell rang, two more children made their way in that Octavia thought were worth introducing.

“That’s my best friend!” she told Lexa happily, waving over the pretty blonde girl with bright blue eyes, who was accompanied by a darker skinned boy with a spring to his step. “Clarke! Over here!” Lexa discovered that Clarke’s mother, Abby, was a senator from Missouri, but split her time between there and DC, where Clarke and her husband lived. Wells was in a similar situation, his father, Thelonious, hailing from Michigan. Lincoln and Clarke got along like a house on fire, bonding over their artistry, and Lexa found herself surprised at the pang of jealousy that erupted in her chest. Clarke would be her friend, too, so she shouldn’t be mad that the girl and her brother got along.

When she noticed Clarke doodling on her arm during class instead of paying attention, she almost opened her mouth to reprimand her, but it snapped shut when she realized the same patterns the girl was sketching onto her right arm were showing up on Lexa as well, and the discovery was like a quick punch to the throat.

Anya laughed and ruffled her hair when she told her, and Gustus and Indra looked pleasantly surprised. It was unheard of to find your soulmate so early in life. So, the Woods household usually found itself with another member, and the Griffin house experienced the same.

Clarke and Lexa grew up together, and it was everything that Lexa could have hoped for. Though they had best friends in the forms of Octavia and Costia, they were each other’s  _ best _ best friends. Lexa braided Clarke’s hair and taught her how to dodge a punch, Clarke taught Lexa how to climb trees and patched up her scraped knees, and painted on Lexa’s skin, both of them feeling tingly and euphoric when the lines always matched on each other. 

They started actually dating in high school, but they’d really been in love for much longer than that. Their relationship was comfortable and familiar and felt like coming home, filled initially with soft, tentative kisses and giggles when their noses bumped because quite frankly neither of them had any experience in these regards, but they figured it out together. They were two pieces of a puzzle, and fit together snugly, perfectly, like they were made for each other. They  _ were  _ made for each other. 

And Lexa was the luckiest girl in the whole world because of it.

* * *

 

_ Octavia Blake _

Octavia Blake was a free spirit, and never really asked for much in life other than the ability to do her own thing and live her own life. When she was young, the idea of  _ soulmates _ seemed entirely too restricting. Why would anyone want to be tied down to one person for the rest of their lives? Her thoughts on the subject matter changed when Lexa Woods moved to the quaint little neighborhood that she called home, changed when Octavia noticed that the paint stains on Clarke’s skin matched Lexa’s perfectly.

Watching Clarke and Lexa grow together was a beautiful thing. Clarke would come to Octavia, late at night, with stars in her eyes as she talked and talked and talked for hours on end about how  _ perfect  _ this girl was and how amazing it felt to even be in her presence. And watching the light in Clarke’s eyes, the utter adoration that shone there, pure happiness leaking from Clarke’s very soul, Octavia decided that maybe soulmates weren’t such a bad thing after all.

She knew it was different for everyone. Clarke had drawn onto her skin long before Lexa arrived, but it didn’t show up until Lexa arrived. Her mother told her that she hadn’t started seeing her father’s handwriting until they were twenty-two, and they’d never met at that point, but had quickly tried to find each other. Aurora was from Greece, and Agustin from the Philippines, and Octavia wasn’t quite sure how they’d managed to end up in  _ DC  _ of all places, but she was glad they had. She wouldn’t trade the friends she’d made here for anything in the world. 

As she grows older, Octavia can’t help but feel a little jealous that Clarke and Lexa found each other so early. Of course, she’s beyond happy for the two of them, and also mildly disgusted at how adorable they are together, but she’s still a tad envious that she hasn’t found her person yet. She leaves doodles on her skin every day in hopes of someone responding, but luck wasn’t on her side, so as the years trickled by, her attempts became few and far between. 

At one point, she and Lincoln dated, and it was fun, freeing, but both of them knew that they weren’t the ones for each other, and had ended the relationship on friendly terms. Bellamy had been disappointed that the two of them weren’t soulmates, because Lincoln was one of the few people he approved of and was willing to trust with his little sister’s heart, but everyone in the friend group had accepted it with ease and moved on. 

They’re in college now. Clarke and Octavia are roommates, as are Lexa and Costia and Jasper and Monty (Lincoln’s roommate is a kindred spirit of his named Nyko), and things are going swimmingly. Jasper is how Octavia was in the early stages of her desire for a soulmate, constantly leaving notes and hoping,  _ praying  _ for someone to talk back to him, and Costia is a firm believer of “it takes as long as it takes”, and doesn’t actively seek her soulmate out. Monty watches this all with a fond roll of his eyes, and tries to explain that he just doesn’t feel romantic attraction, or understand it at all, and he isn’t sure he wants to. He’s perfectly content with friendship and his own passion for technology, and Octavia doesn’t understand him but she respects and loves Monty too much to question the validity of her statements (she figures out it’s called  _ aromanticism  _ later, on the internet, and it starts to make more sense).

When she turns twenty-one, and is out enjoying a night with friends, it finally,  _ finally  _ happens.

She wakes up sore and with a pounding headache, cuddled up with Clarke in their dorm, but there are words on her arm that she  _ definitely  _ didn’t put there, in a handwriting that is much more uniform than hers, and it’s in spanish. It’s at this point that she swears and wishes that one of her parents were from Mexico instead of Greece or the Philippines, because she can speak three languages but spanish is not one of them. With the help of google translate and a little bit of blind faith, she figures out that the words are song lyrics, probably written so that her soulmate could track down the song that matched the words later.

Tentatively, almost as though she’s afraid that the words are a figment of her imagination, Octavia writes back.

_ Sounds like a cool songs, know any in english I should listen to? _

There’s a long moment in which Octavia forgets that oxygen is something she desperately leaves, but then she can see words twisting onto her skin and she does a little dance in thanks that her soulmate speaks english. Soon, there’s a running list of song recommendations on her arm, and Octavia is grinning ear-to-ear.

She discovers that the girl’s name is Raven Reyes, and that she lives in Arizona, attending ASU for a degree in mechanical engineering. As she’s excitedly telling this to her friends, she sees Lexa’s eyes widen ever so slightly and that’s how the group figures out that the Raven Reyes that is Octavia’s soulmate is the same Raven Reyes who pushed Lexa down the slide in kindergarten because she was taking too long. (When Octavia tells Raven this, as they’ve exchanged numbers, the latina girl laughs, but doesn’t apologize “ _ She  _ was  _ being slow! Couldn’t let her just sit up there deciding when there was a line forming.” _ )

Octavia discovers that Raven’s voice is her new favorite lullaby, and the two of them often fall asleep together, never ending the FaceTime, lulled to sleep by each other’s deep breathing. They haven’t met in the flesh, but Octavia feels as though she’s known Raven her entire life, and finds herself talking to her nonstop, whether it be through flirtatious snapchats or ranting texts about idiots in her classes or long FaceTime calls where they just talk for hours with no particular topic in mind, just wishing to hear the other’s voice.

They try to teach each other their languages. 

Octavia picks up spanish pretty quickly, because she already has practice with three languages, so a fourth isn’t that difficult to start learning. After they’ve been talking for about six months, Raven has begun to pick up the basics of filipino, but greek is completely lost on her, which annoys the mechanic to no end. She and Monty would get along swimmingly, as they’re both great minds who become increasingly annoyed when something doesn’t come easily to them academically speaking.

After a year of FaceTiming non-stop, always talking, and getting to know one another, they finally meet. 

Raven gets enough money to open up her own shop in DC, with the help of her friend, Kyle Wick, who lives there. Octavia’s met the guy once or twice in passing, as he’s friends with Bellamy’s housemate, Nathan Miller, but finds herself eternally grateful to the relative stranger for helping Raven get out to DC. 

Her friends are with her in the airport, waiting. Lexa is there because Octavia knows that it’ll be nice for Raven to have another familiar face, though she’s already been introduced to the others over text, and is already fond of Clarke and Lexa, who she calls Clexa when referencing them to Octavia, and Clarke has her phone out, ready to film them meeting for the first time. 

Octavia  _ feels  _ Raven before she sees her, and Octavia’s head immediately snaps up to meet brown eyes that she’s fallen so in love with, and they are running towards each other, as though they are the only two people in the entire airport. Raven, despite her brace, launches herself into Octavia’s arms, legs wrapping around the other girl’s waist, ignoring the slight pain of the brace digging into her back, before peppering kisses all over Octavia’s face before their lips finally,  _ finally  _ meet.

In this moment, Octavia understands clearly now. 

Bellamy had tried to explain it to her, the twenty-six year old, who had found his soulmate two years earlier, that it felt inexplicably like coming home. She hadn’t understood it when he said it, how he just saw Murphy and  _ knew _ , and she hadn’t understood it when Clarke had tried, time and time again to explain exactly how Lexa made her feel. 

But now, with Raven in her arms,  _ with her _ , here, in the flesh, Octavia understood more than she understood anything else in the entire world.

It was love.

**Author's Note:**

> What'd you think? I'm personally a big fan of Clarke drawing really hyper realistic dicks on her friends as pranks/forfeits for bets/revenge because gotta use her powers of art for some good in the world, right? 
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are greatly appreciated (I'm always a slut for validation so comments are super cool), come hang out on my tumblr, [hedaclexa](http://www.hedaclexa.tumblr.com).


End file.
